Do EA own it all?

#1 Do yourself a favor and call it Demi-God of the Squares..

#2 What if I got EA to publish my game?

#3 Heh, ask EA, I'm sure they'll reply in kind with a nice cease and desist letter.

#4 You say on your profile that "i am a game and application designer with a million ideas for your game!!!!"

I would suggest that you take one of those ideas, grab a developer and artist, and write your own game. Getting through the legal wrangling just isnt worth it.

Besides it's been done before, and with expected results. See this thread for details on how the promising Stargate project was stopped dead in it's tracks.

#5 You won't be able to do a tolkien game without paying the tolkien family at some point. Tolkien died in 1973, so it'll be a long time before his books fall into public domain. (2043?)

Luckily, they don't own exclusive rights to elves, dwarves, men, and orcs, just to the specific elves, dwarves, men, and orcs found in the books. I'm sure you could remove all of the Lord of the Rings elements from your game without hurting the design too much. You'll have to come up with your own history and characters, but if you ask me, that should be a lot of fun.

(BTW: This is my 100th post. Hooray.)

#6 NEW IDEAS people, As indies we have the PRILIVELGE to make new Intellectual Properties. From my experiance with the commerical industry they want to beat any IP they own to death.

What makes you think your Tolken game is even a good idea? Why is EA making ANOTHER Lord of the Ring Game? Do you really think J.R. Tolken would like his idea twisted/contorted to abide by your rules?

You have freedom, if you like the "fairy tale" approach then make a NEW fairy tale, it happens every day, there are tons of them. Just go to 1 Pen and Paper convention you will see hundreds if not thousands of new ideas or twist on the fairy tale genre. What you won't see is people blatantly ripping off Names of established I.P.s for the sake of using the name.

#7 Think EA have the movie licence and vivendi have the book licences, chances ogf you getting anywhere is going to be pretty much nill.

#8 Ha ha. hey maybe he could have the rights to the'hobbit movie" i dont think EA or Vivendi have the rights to those. Or you can see if the Tolkien family will let you license the long forgotten Lord of the Rings breakfast ceral or cartoon show. Just think little sugar coated marshmallow characters shaped like Aragorn and Gimli..... or hey you dont necessarily have to use the characters just make up your own and change the name. get creative. Gimagorn, Legoli, Frosam... i can go on and on. but you'll be payin through the nose to license that name. just make a fantasy universe with your own characters.

@ Anthony

lighten up guy. this is his idea. its new to him.(0r her) you're right as indies we can make our own ideas but what if by some crazy chance thats the idea he has and wants to pursue?

#9 I have to agree with Anthony. I love Tolken's work as much as the next guy, but use it as inspiration rather than foundation.

#10 If he/she has an Idea, great he/she should persue it. But if he is ripping off anothers IP then he has no right to do so.

As Adam says feel free to use it as insperation, but to not invest time to develope a unique universe is stealing.

Now what is there to stop him, well nothing really. He could go make a game and blatantly steal their Idea. I find nothing wrong with that for "educational" purposes. When I first came here I made a game based around the T.V. series G.I. Joe. I never planned to release it. But when I showed screen shots to this community there was a huge out burst of "Hasbro WILL sue you".

I had to state over and over again this was never inteneted to be sold, meirly a learning project.

Jordan said

Quote:
I have a wicked idea for a lord of the rings game. But i wanna know if EA own all the rights to making games to do with lord of the rings.

Which totally impies he want to make a game to sell. Which without the proper legal documents would be stealing.

"Lighten up" you say, I was being relaxed, I was giving commentary based on personal experiance. Hopefully he will learn that IP is someone sweat, blood and tears. To even consider making a profit from it without their consent is wrong and could put you in court.

As for my project, it died when I saw a GI Joe mod for Battlefield 1942, I in fact met the Project Lead at IGC 03. His project was WELL done, beautiful art, lots of vehicles, and could have been a great mod, but they never could get in contact with the right people at Hasbro. Soon after IGC Hasbro found them, send them a "cease and desist " order, and since the mod has gone the way of the dodo.

#11 Good point anthony i guess my point was hey if he want to make the game go ahead.. but dont expect to selll it or show pictures. i guess it would be a little creativly bankrupt. theres a lot more fantasy ideas out there jordan. but hey try licensing the lotr breakfast cereal rights. you could have something there:-)

#12 EA does not own my soul

#13 Does anyone know if my game that I've been working on (it's quite comical), called Wally World will be ok? I have changed many of the things in it to keep my @

#14 @ thomas

you didn't hear? they got the exlcusive rights to yours any body elses soul that lives in north america for the next five years. so they got it.

#15 Wow. most detailed replys on any forums I have encounted.

@craig

I am currently learning to program and I am pretty well trained in Milkshape :p.
Copyright is a harsh thing but good in ways. I'll just leave EA to do thier work.

#16 Marvin:
Thats too bad...
I'm an australian :D

#17 The Top 10 Things EA Should Buy Next

I heard a rumor that #2 on that list is beeing seriously concidered ;)

#18 Jorgen, that was awesome, good funny read.

#19 Funny?!? I thought it was serious!

XD

#20 @ Frogger

Just don't have your Mascot be a Moose and you'll probably be ok.